We’re looking for people who share our commitment to delivering quality-filtered updates of emerging evidence that focus on the needs of health and social care professionals. It would also help if you like elves!

You might be a subject specialist, a clinician, a researcher, a student or even an information scientist. If you want to use your research and writing skills to make a real difference to patient care – read on.

The 7 live elf websites we have launched over the last 2 years are all run by experts in their field who believe that health professionals need access to the right evidence at the right time, in order to keep up to date with best current knowledge.

The magnificent seven are all bringing high quality evidence to those who need it most

The Mental Elf website is really popular with students, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, GPs, researchers and other health and social care professionals, and it’s also widely used by patients, carers, librarians, teachers and journalists. Our number of followers across all platforms is now well over 10,000.

We have featured a few guest blogs on the Mental Elf and these have been popular with readers, so we now want to expand the number of bloggers who write on the website.

What you will bring

There are a few essentials that you will need to write for the Mental Elf:

Mental health knowledge: you don’t need to be a Professor, but you do need to know about mental health or a specific health condition within the specialty

Critical appraisal skills: you need to be comfortable reading, appraising and summarising research papers

Writing skills: you need to be able to write in clear, simple and engaging language

Do you have an elf in you, fighting to get out?

What we can offer you

There are a number of reasons why you might like to write for us:

Audience: this website, our social media channels and our mobile apps reach a wide audience, so your blogs will get read by thousands of people

Skills: we can help you learn more about evidence-based healthcare, blogging and social media

Woodland camaraderie: it’s a lot of fun working for the National Elf Service!

How will it work?

We will sign you up and ask you to commit to at least one blog per month

André started the Mental Elf website in May 2011.
He has worked as an Information Scientist in Mental Health since the late nineties; initially at Oxford University's Centre for Evidence-Based Mental Health and since 2002 as the Managing Director of Minervation Ltd.
He loves blogging, social media and elves! He also has established interests in evidence-based healthcare, usability testing and web design.

I am currently in my second year of studying Psychology at the University of Leeds. This upcoming Summer I have a 5 month break and would love to blog for the Mental Elf. I currently write for my departmental magazine, so I have experience of writing in a blog-ish manner.

Hello, I would like to share some of my experiences regarding mental health and my personal battle with mental health issues having come through a ten year battle with depression, anxiety and a nervous breakdown.

I’ve put the worst behind me and discovered some practical and helpful coping strategies for those help! moments that have taken me from being too down to get out of bed to somebody who has worked all over the world and is planning the next few steps in my life and development.

I really want for people who are suffering and struggling to feel that there may be a way out of the dark and that with tiny changes, they can make themselves feel a part of life and actually begin to enjoy it again.

My writing’s not brilliant but with help, I’d like to develop it and use it to help somebody in need

[…] nurses on this website. Please email me if you are interested in contributing or read the original invite for contributors that I wrote in February 2013 if you want to find out more about what’s […]